"Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: …
Bitter, brownish and sticky, opium - the sap of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum - has been cultivated from the earliest of times. Known to the Greeks as opos or opion, as afiun in Persian and Arabic, and Fu-yung in Chinese, it is a substance that is at once both a palliativ…
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"A biography of the last of the Romantics describes his rags-to-riches life and career as a journalist, translator, essayist and opium addict who inspired generations of writers with his emotional memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, "--NoveList. De Quincey became an o…
"Opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin have destroyed, corrupted, and killed individuals, families, communities, and even whole nations. And yet, for most of its long history, opium has also been humanity's most effective means of alleviating physical and mental pain. Th…
Opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin have destroyed, corrupted, and killed individuals, families, communities, and even whole nations. And yet, for most of its long history, opium has also been humanity's most effective means of alleviating physical and mental pain. Thi…
"Opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin have destroyed, corrupted, and killed individuals, families, communities, and even whole nations. And yet, for most of its long history, opium has also been humanity's most effective means of alleviating physical and mental pain. Th…
"Opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin have destroyed, corrupted, and killed individuals, families, communities, and even whole nations. And yet, for most of its long history, opium has also been humanity's most effective means of alleviating physical and mental pain. Th…
A tale of vice and passion set against a backdrop of late 1970s Bombay finds a New Yorker becoming entranced with the underworld culture of an opium den and brothel where he encounters a pipe-making eunuch, a violent businessman, and a Chinese refugee.
Opium addiction in China during the closing decades of the Ch'ing dynasty afflicted all segments of society. From government officials to farmers, the population fell prey to the effects of the drug. Some provinces reported addiction rates as high as eighty percent. With the bir…
A gripping and groundbreaking history of how ancient cultures developed and used biological, chemical, and other unconventional weapons of warFlamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease: are these terrifying agents of warfare modern invent…
